Monday, March 29, 2010

During a discussion yesterday with CNN's Don Lemon on recent acts of racism and threats of violence by members of the tea-party gang, Tim Wise provided a useful analogy for countering those who claim that we shouldn't even talk about racism -- that "talking about racism only divides people," that "there wouldn't be a racial problem if people wouldn't play the race card," and so on:

To blame the conversation about race for racism is like blaming the speedometer on your car for the ticket that you just got. It doesn't make any sense.

I embedded an excerpt from the show below, and the video's transcript below that.

Also, something to note about CNN's general framing of these issues -- which I see elsewhere in the corporate media coverage about racism and threats of violence among tea-party gangs -- is the effort to claim that "heated rhetoric" is coming from both sides of the current political divide. As the show's host Don Lemon says at one point,

This isn't a Republican -- or is it a Republican or Democrat thing? Because language has been used on both sides to sort of stir people and to rile them up and to get them motivated. So it's not -- is it a Republican and Democrat thing?

But really, what kind of "language" are they talking about here? How much racism and threatened violence, let alone heated rhetoric, comes from what constitutes the Left, compared to how much comes from the Right? And how much more willfully does the Right look the other way when people on its side say and do such things? Both Democrats and Republicans strike me as generally corrupt, but in this respect, I see a false equivalency being made (and please, no links to old images depicting George Bush as a chimp -- that's another false equivalence).

I think one reason the corporate media distorts things this way is that they want to establish general "debates," so they can then provide us with discussions between pundits on both sides. However, as billmon points out in a very insightful piece here, this way of framing things -- "Both sides do it!" -- plays into an insidious strategy often deployed by the Right to create such "false narratives":

The specific disinformation technique in play is one I call "mirror image" (or, when I’m in a Star Trek mood, "Spock with a beard"). It consists of charging the opposing side (i.e. the enemies of the people) with doing exactly what you yourself have been accused of doing, typically with a hell of a lot more justification.

So here's the video containing excerpts from the show:

TRANSCRIPT:

DON LEMON: "What Matters" tonight, the vigorous debate over health care reform has stirred up a lot of emotions across the country including death threats and vandalism against members of Congress. Now, earlier I spoke about the power of words with Tim Wise, he’s the author of "Colorblind," "New York Times" columnist, Ben Zimmer, and Marc Lamont Hill of Columbia University. And I started by asking if the White House had perhaps helped fuel some of the with its own terminology.

TIM WISE: Back in the summer of last year, we’re using the phraseology of a “public option.” I think they were naive in the sense that what they forget is that for the past 40 years, whenever we talk about public anything in this country -- public transportation, public housing, public schools -- an awful lot of people hear, whether it's meant or not, hear people of color as the beneficiaries.

And so, when you put that out there, a lot of the white folks, who already are being told by Limbaugh and Beck that this health care bill is just reparations for slavery, end up having that reinforced by the somewhat naive post-racial rhetoric of the administration. I think they played right into that.

LEMON: And I --

WISE: Yes?

LEMON: Tim, I see Marc shaking his head, trying to get in here. Marc, why are you shaking your head?

HILL: Well, because I think there's been a very consistent strategy from the right to racialize public policies so that poor white people who are often most vulnerable or most in need of those policies will vote against it to align themselves with a certain kind of whiteness, and whiteness as property so that the poor white guy in Mississippi that needs welfare votes against welfare because he thinks he's voting against a poor black woman in Harlem.
LEMON: Right. I want to get Ben in on this. Because Ben you write about language, in the "New York Times," Sunday magazine every Sunday. Words matter, and when you look at -- you've written a little bit about it. How are you seeing the words being played out? Because they can move and motivate people.

BEN ZIMMER: They sure can, and very often there's this kind of a flashpoint and certainly the health care reform debate has been that kind of flashpoint. And with last summer from the town hall meetings and the rise of the tea party movement, we've seen an increasing polarization of the rhetoric, and that has led to some real rancor and we can see that when times are really tense like this, that words really do matter and especially when there are threats to public officials.

That means that everyone has to be cognizant of the kind of tone that they strike, and the kinds of metaphors and figures of speech that are being used may sometimes be inappropriate and sometimes can really be a cause of concern.

LEMON: I want to listen to Sarah Palin as she spoke earlier today, at the tea party rally in Searchlight, Nevada.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH PALIN (R), FMR. VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When I talk about, “it's not a time to retreat, it's a time to reload.” When I'm talking about -- now, media, try to get this right. OK? That's not inciting violence. What that is doing is trying to inspire people to get involved in their local elections and these upcoming federal elections. It's telling people that their arms are their votes. It's not inciting violence. It's telling people, “Don't ever let anybody tell you to sit down and shut up, Americans.”

30 comments:

LEMON: Marc, listen, freedom of speech. I always say that. People have the right to say whatever they want. I will fight tooth and nail for that, but is it responsible for someone to say that? Especially a leader, considering the anger that's going on right now?

HILL: This is wholly irresponsible for anyone who prides him or herself as a political leader. I mean, you have cross hairs on a map. You have gun language, militaristic language and the sort of inciting towards violence. That's a very problematic thing. We live in a country where just fifty years ago people were shot down for public policy progress.

This is another major public policy moment. The same thing could happen again. 30 years ago we had a president shot. We live in a moment right now where people are constantly threatened and intimidated through gun violence. We live in a country that has had more gun violence than any other developed nation combined. So it's very irresponsible in that moment to throw rocks and hide your hands and suggest that you're only using metaphors as opposed to possibly inciting the most extreme wing of your party.

LEMON: So I want to ask Tim this because I just got someone on Twitter -- if we can show the board here – “Tim” said, "Unbelievable, Don Lemon. All three panelists are working from the assumption of racism. Anybody see this nice diversity of opinion." And there are people I've been getting things saying when we do discussions like this, don't talk about race. You're dividing people when you talk about race. And to that, you say?

TIM WISE, AUTHOR "COLORBLIND": Well, look, to blame the conversation about race for racism is like blaming the speedometer on your car for the ticket that you just got. It doesn't make any sense. When you have mobs of people surrounding John Lewis, one of this nation's preeminent heroes in the civil rights struggle and using the "n" word with him, when you've got folks showing up at rallies with signs that have the president with a bone through his nose dressed like a witch doctor, or pictures of the White House lawn covered in watermelons, you don't get to retreat and go, "Gee, don't talk about that. If you wouldn't talk about it, it would go away.”

We wouldn't say that about any other problem. I mean, think about world hunger. Who would say, world hunger, "Gee, if we just don't talk about it, maybe food will miraculously appear on the plates of the hungry?" I mean, no other problem on earth do we say that. Here's the thing, Don, historically white America has never wanted to talk about race. We didn't want to talk about it in 1963 when two out of three white Americans said the Civil Rights Movement was pushing for too much and was being divisive and in '68, Pat Buchanan told Richard Nixon, not to go to Dr. King's funeral because he was one of the most divisive people in American history. A lot of white folks on the right have always wanted to stop talking about this and they've always been wrong. And they were asking for it.

LEMON: And Ben, this isn't just – you mentioned, you talked about whites and blacks and what have you. But it's not, this is -- this isn't a Republican -- or is it a Republican or Democrat thing? Because language has been used on both sides to sort of stir people and to rile them up and to get them motivated. So it's not -- is it a Republican and Democrat thing?

ZIMMER: Well, I mean, I think that no party, no side has a monopoly on inflammatory rhetoric. Very often it's the party that is out of power that will have the most inflamed rhetoric, let's say. Very much it's kind of raging against the machine. Now, sometimes you might be able to look at it through the racial prism, as has been suggested, but a lot of times what we see is that just a kind of a polarization of both sides, and we can see that this happens through the kind of echo chambers that happen on both the right and the left through partisan blogs and the use of social media now has a way of actually hardening the positions on both sides of the debate.

LEMON: As I'm sitting here, reading some of the comments. Listen, I'm going to wrap it up here. Ben Zimmer, thank you, Marc Lamont Hill, you know this -- quick, what's the solution here? Where do we go from here? I mean, really quickly.

HILL: We need to change the language. The language reflects our sensibilities. But in addition to changing the language we also need to change our practice and really address structural racism in this country.

LEMON: Same thing, Tim. I got five seconds.

WISE: Marc's right! You’ll have to bring me back and I'll tell you more.

LEMON: Thank you. Thanks to all of you. Ben Zimmer, Marc Lamont Hill and also Tim Wise. We appreciate the conversation and we appreciate our viewers weighing in as well.

I think this tendency ties a lot back into the post you wrote last week, macon, about white people's tendency to call it "politically incorrect" instead of "racist." Talking about race is uncomfortable for white people, because it means acknowledging the truths of others, and often those truths directly contradict the things that white people would like to believe about themselves and their culture (when they stop to think about and examine white culture, that is). Talking about race creates a cognitive dissonance for white people because in their minds, it's "Racism is bad. I am good. Therefore, I am not racist" - they are resistant to the concept of impersonal, systemic racism because to understand that requires first that they disassemble their own myth of individuality, and begin to understand their actions as part of a (white) pattern. Combine that with the concept of racism as "KKK card-bearing members burning crosses on people's lawns" instead of the more persistent microaggressions experienced by people of colour on a daily basis and you have a group of people who cannot see the forest for the trees, who resist the very concept of the forest because it undermines everything they know about the way the world works.

I've had this conversation with white people in my life over and over again - same conversation, different people - and it never ceases to amaze me how unique they truly believe their objections are, and how determined they are that I "hear them out," even after I've pointed out that I've heard it all before - because I have, but because I haven't heard it from them I clearly just haven't been listening. It's frustrating.

This is once again proof that racism is NOT because people of color keep "bringing it up." It is because the monolith refuses to let us forget that we are not them. People who naively think we are in a post racial world are just fooling themselves.

@ saraspeaking - "...you have a group of people who cannot see the forest for the trees, who resist the very concept of the forest because it undermines everything they know about the way the world works."

As a white person this is something I've been trying to articulate. I think this does it perfectly. I am 36 years old, college educated, and have always considered myself to be fairly well versed in what the world is about and how it works. However, I've had so many paradigm shifting moments since stumbling upon this blog..and they continue to happen. Just today it occurred to me (after reading another article and then this entry) that this out-of-control anger over the health care bill did have some serious racial underpinnings. I had wondered why people had suddenly gone back to this cold war era fear of "the commies". I seriously wondered what was wrong with some people. I figured there were probably a few racist nut jobs in the bunch, but didn't attribute racism as a significant 'mainline' issue in the health debate. It just amazes me that it wasn't more obvious to me. Seriously, this does give me something to think about. I'm not asking POCs to have more patience with WP, but it is absolutely true that some of the most obvious things in the world are not AT ALL obvious to many of us. Here's a link the article I found enlightening about this: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/28

Thanks for the link to Frank Rich's article, LolaAnn, which others have also been recommending to me today. Here's a faster route to the Common Dreams version, which has a lot of comments, and here's the original New York Times version, which has a ton of comments.

"How much racism and threatened violence, let alone heated rhetoric, comes from what constitutes the Left, compared to how much comes from the Right? And how much more willfully does the Right look the other way when people on its side say and do such things?"

While I do agree that most racists live on the right side of the political spectrum, the claim that most "heated rhetoric" and "threatened violence" comes from the right is pure nonsense and is the sort of thing that someone would say who is cynically partisan or utterly blind to the political scene of the last couple of decades.

Do you really think the Right "looks the other way?" I'm just not seeing it. You might not agree with them, but I don't think they're stupid. Seems to me that conservative pols will do practically anything to avoid getting tarred with the brush of racism. Most know it's political death to get pigeonholed as a "racist" and they act accordingly.

Also, if you read up on the conservative media, they seem to think it's a bit futile to answer every charge of racism. Their point of view is that the left uses the charge to attack them, they know they're going to get characterized that way as a matter of course, so policing their own members seems like being sent on a sucker's task dictated by the left. They ain't biting.

@saraspeaking re: 'Talking about race creates a cognitive dissonance for white people because in their minds, it's "Racism is bad. I am good. Therefore, I am not racist" - they are resistant to the concept of impersonal, systemic racism because to understand that requires first that they disassemble their own myth of individuality, and begin to understand their actions as part of a (white) pattern.'

Yes. I encounter this dissonance among students trying to wrestle with their own role in racism or anti-racist work. I think that's what "divisive" really means in this context: Accepting that racism is not an individual failing divides me from my understanding of the way the world works. The US is so invested as a society in the myth of individuality that any challenge to it feels existential. I think that's one reason why resistance to even talking about race is so strong.

It's the most aggravating, nonsensical argument I ever heard whenever I talk about racism.

I always like to use this analogy to explain how the argument of bringing up racism IS racism is severely flawed:

What if you have a deep cut or wound in your body so severe that it requires immediate medical attention? In the logic of trying to avoid conversations about race one would not even acknowledge the wound. To them they think that the wound would get better on its own. However, one doesn't need to be doctor to know that not treating the wound would do more harm than good. The wound will allow more blood to come out, infection to set in, and will even lead to death.

To me by not talking about racism will not help this country, but it may likely doom this country. Racism is a wound that most Americans don't like to treat because the wound is too disgusting to even see.

Another example of this non-logic that's been floating around is a "political cartoon" that depicts Obama having just raped the Statue of Liberty.

(there's a post about it on Feministe:http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/03/29/right-wing-cartoon-depicts-obama-raping-the-statue-of-liberty/The image may be triggering)

If you go to the website where it was originally posted, the "cartoonist" claims that her critics are the real racists for thinking that Obama's blackness has anything to do with his depiction of a rapist. So obtuse.

"...could you please be more specific about your claim that "threatened violence" is also common on the left. Examples please?"

Well ok, but what kind of examples are you looking for?

Nasty, scary public rhetoric directed towards a sitting President? Nasty, scary public rhetoric directed towards "the other side" of the political debate? Street level political violence directed towards conservative activists? Street level violence on a large scale where police often get injured, and which cities pay for in tens of millions of dollars in property damage? Silencing through intimidation and disruptions of differing political viewpoints on universities? Or bomb threats, personal threats or physical assaults made on conservatives and GOP pols?

Lemme know, I'll help you if I have time, otherwise I'm sure you can find plenty examples of any of the above on your own.

The "both sides do it" is the same tactic used whenever someone tries to criticize Israel or charge Israelis with war crimes and violating international law. I think the "both sides do it" is used by whites to deflect justified criticisms away from tea partyers and other white Americans who are accused of racism.

Lemon is correct about both using language that could enable political violence, and rather prescisnt considering the asassination threats aimed at eric cantor revealed today.

Teaparties got into trouble b/c of their racist signs, conspiracy theories (birtherism), and unhinged often violent rhetoric aimed at the president. But we have an analagous situation with antiwar rallies.

For 8 years conservatives undermined the antiwar movement by exposing thier antisemitism, conspiracy theories (911 denialism, which is not unrelated to antisemitism), and pro left wing totalitarian views. You can see some of it here:

http://www.ringospictures.com/index.php?page=20090816

The lack of regard the movement had for human rights was highlighted by the organizer themselves, as even leftist David Corn concurs:

”the demonstration was essentially organized by the Workers World Party, a small political sect that years ago split from the Socialist Workers Party to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. The party advocates socialist revolution and abolishing private property. It is a fan of Fidel Castro‘s regime in Cuba, and it hails North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il for preserving his country’s ”socialist system,“ which, according to the party‘s newspaper, has kept North Korea ”from falling under the sway of the transnational banks and corporations that dictate to most of the world.“ The WWP has campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. A recent Workers World editorial declared, ”Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong.“”

Manju and Vick appear to just be trolling for the right. Vick's "examples" are all vague categories, no specific examples, and they're unrelated to race and thus simply distraction/derailment.

Manju's only potentially relevant point is antisemitism, but if that's going to be taken seriously it needs some valid evidence backing it up. Also we need to consider whether the "mainstream left" supported such nutcases or ostracized them, and I think the answer is pretty obvious.

After watching "Tea Party Express to GOP" on CNN this evening, in which Congressman Grayson ripped into a shaky & defensive Tea Klux Klan rep about death threats, all I could think was how people being told to "ignore" all this shit is just white denial at its finest.

If the bitch is real, and she is found, and she's appropriately hung out to dry, what will the comments be like then? See, this whole Tea Klux Klan sitch is starting to smell like a really bad Lifetime flick, in which the FBI are going to be "too late" and end up tripping over some dead Senator in the dark or some shit....

And could someone kindly explain to me why Palin's minions don't stop to notice that they are helping her get ridiculously paid? No, wait...never mind. Don't bother. I just remembered that when the economy was crashing and these same folks were losing not only the roofs over their heads, but the very shirts off their backs, they didn't seem to care that their "Maverick" couldn't even remember how many goddamn houses he owned (seven-ish, if I recall correctly...plus a shitload of condos).

*mutters to self* Talk about some ig'nant ass white slaves tryin' to get in on a bit o' Massa's priv'lege, yessir....

Uh, can we keep political parties out of this? I understand using the actions of individual politicians as examples, but this blog isn't "stuff Republicans do" or "stuff Democrats do" so I don't think anything other than race really need be discussed in this much detail.

I'll have to keep all of these analogies in mind for next semester. Some of my students often react this way to my class - that they were all good colorblind folk before they attended my class and by talking about race I am only helping perpetuate racial structures. Yeah, so if we didn't talk about race, racism would disappear.

Also, this is off topic, but here's another thing that pisses me of: people are quicker to point these things out if you start talking about "white people." For some reason, a lot of white people hate to be reminded that they are white. They like to think of themselves as "normal" raceless, colorblind people. So, if you use the adjective white to describe them, they get all inflamed and accuse you of bringing up race and perpetuating racism. Ah, white privilege.

@bloglogger: I think that's what "divisive" really means in this context: Accepting that racism is not an individual failing divides me from my understanding of the way the world works.

I've never thought of it that way before, but I think you're absolutely correct. Thanks for that insight :)

@titania: Oh yes! I encounter similar reactions from white people all the time. I think the individualism thing plays into that a lot as well - part of white privilege is being able to view oneself as an individual, unrelated to a larger pattern, and so to remind them that they are part of a larger group of people is an affront to their sense of self. Amazing how that works, innit? :)

Of course you don't have to do any work if you don't want to. I also asked that you help me by narrowing down the search some, after all, you have to agree that macon's question is a very big one!

So, out of all the types of political violence, threatened or otherwise, and heated rhetoric that I listed, which would you like me to provide examples of? I will be happy to back up my claim and to provide examples of the Left doing them just as much as the Right - if not more - as I have the time. Let me know.

@Vick re: "I will be happy to back up my claim and to provide examples of the Left doing them just as much as the Right - if not more - as I have the time. Let me know."

Happy to? But you won't do it. Well, I can tell you that I have been involved with several organized groups on the left, and none has ever advocated any violence against conservative politicians. If they did, I would have been out of there. So what are your examples?

Thanks, but I said organized groups. I don't think that either those pictured on the site you linked calling for death to Bush or those crying death to Obama represent organized groups even if they appear at group-sponsored rallies. Neither do I think that either is justified or defensible.

Calling for a legal accounting for war crimes is a different matter, however. If war crimes can be proved against any leader, justice should be pursued.